IPTV takes to the deep Australian seas

The reach of IPTV services continues to transcend the traditional sectors of entertainment and media and is being adapted progressively into areas where big data video collation is integral to innovation.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has been using IPTV solutions to amplify its vast data collation and environmental investigative projects. As Australia’s primary source of marine biological, chemical and physical data across Australia's tropical shelf waters, AIMS endeavours to make these data sets available through its world-class data centre.

While it is still considered new to the tool kit of marine research, the use of video for monitoring in marine environments is being rapidly adopted as connectivity becomes high speed and ubiquitous and the technology itself becomes more accessible and affordable.

In Australia, the Institute of Marine Science has found that using video instead of traditional manual ie human based diver- monitoring has afforded a number of benefits to the organisation and its research.

This includes creating a permanent record of observations, reducing observer bias and human error and allowing for a simple exchange of information between researchers and other stakeholders.

AIMS has deployed two video monitoring techniques in tropical marine waters with the help of video solutions provider CombiTel, this includes towed video and baited remote underwater video stations.

AIMS scientists have used towed video recordings to access and record the habitats of remote and previously unexplored locations from the inshore Kimberley coast to deep, offshore shoals far to the north and north-west of the mainland of Australia. A towed video solution involves cameras accessing large areas of marine habitat via their systematic surveying in water depths of up to 200 m.  The procedure involves video cameras being towed behind a boat along a survey line while scientists observe seabed habitat via video in real time and take high-resolution still images at regular intervals. This imagery is later analysed and archived to describe habitats, analyse species distributions, and map seabed biodiversity over broad areas.

Towed video is used extensively in the north-west of Australia where, as part of our commitment to the sustainable ecological development of marine resources.

The other video solution, baited remote underwater video stations (BRUVS) have since become a common fish-surveying tool around the world and was first developed by AIMS. These stationary, seafloor camera stations use bait to attract the fish in their vicinity, recording species attracted to the bait or just swimming past the camera.

The usability of towed video transmission depends on the equipment ability to achieve low latency. CombiTel had selected VITEC MGW Sprint, a point-to-point IPTV transmission solution running the world's fastest MPEG-4 H.264 HD codec. With 4 milliseconds for encoding and another 4 milliseconds for decoding - MGW Sprint units can stream Full HD 1080p video and audio, point to point or point to multipoint with less than one video frame of delay- practically matching the latency of hard-wired uncompressed video systems.

MGW Sprint uses VITEC's revolutionary sub one-frame TurboVideo2™ technology for broadcasting H.264 IP streams in unicast or multicast, over wide range of network types, while maintaining superb video quality suitable for any video application. From encoding stationary HD cameras, through real-time distribution of imagery from high-resolution computer graphics applications, to motion-intensive broadcast and ISR video - TurboVideo2™ delivers crisp, details - rich video over IP in unprecedented speed and with no visually noticeable delay.